At the beginning of September, 2nd year MFA illustrator Sishir Bommakanti exhibited new work in Gallery 148 on MCAD’s main campus. The Sleep of Reason “takes an opportunity to present [Bommakanti’s] findings after a six year excavation within [his] own subconsciousness. Through drawings and paintings, this series decodes, collages and stitches the content of these narratives into a surreal body of work.”
In 2011, Bommakanti began the ongoing project of journaling about his dreams in order to remember and document every sight, sound, feeling, and action. He also keeps a sketchbook specifically dedicated to free association and non-sequitur imagery based purely on reaction. Both projects include the act of a ritual, helping him to expunge daily stress and personal demons and lock them on to paper.
In creating work for The Sleep of Reason, Bommakanti combines these two approaches to documentation and image creation as a way to “create a new product and a way for [him] to describe [his] dreams. Borrowing from Carl Jung, Bommakanti focuses on the content and narrative to drive the documentation of his dreams. “Through recollected memory, notes and details from a dream journal, Bommakanti explores the visual landscape of dreams, nightmares and other liminal states.”
Photos by Libby Wiswall and Yi Wan.
